Studying a stone called 'Jake' broadens understanding of how igneous rocks form

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This image shows where NASA's Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a rock known as "Jake Matijevic" in late September 2012. The red dots indicate where Curiosity fired its laser at the rock. The circular black and white images are ChemCam images to examine the laser burns. Purple circles show spots where Curiosity used its Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer to study the rock. The colors in the image have been "stretched" to accentuate compositional differences.

A rock on Mars being studied by NASA's Curiosity rover is unlike any Martian stone ever seen, and is surprisingly similar to an unusual, but well-known, kind of rock on Earth.

This type of rock is the first of its kind encountered on Mars and is helping broaden scientists' understanding of how igneous rocks form, scientists said Thursday. The rock, named "Jake Matijevic" in honor of a Curiosity mission team member who died in August, is a 16-inch-tall (40-centimeter-tall) pyramid-shape specimen that Curiosity encountered at its landing spot in Mars' Gale Crater.

Curiosity, the centerpiece of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory Mission, touched down on the Red Planet Aug. 5 to learn whether Mars ever had the conditions necessary to support life.

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: "Astronaut Abby" is at the controls of a social-media machine that is launching the 15-year-old from Minnesota to Kazakhstan this month for the liftoff of the International Space Station's next crew.

The Jake rock is being used as a calibration target for Curiosity to try out its suite of 10 science instruments on. "It was the first good-sized rock that we found along the way," Roger Wiens, principal investigator for Curiosity's ChemCam instrument at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said Thursday during a press conference. [Amazing Mars Rover Curiosity Views (Latest Photos)]

Not like other rocks
In late September Curiosity used ChemCam and its Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) to probe Jake's chemical composition. What they found was surprising.

"The spectrum that we're seeing was not what I expected," said APXS principal investigator Ralf Gellert of Canada's University of Guelph. "It seems to be a new type of rock that we've discovered on Mars" that wasn't seen by NASA's previous Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Jake appears to have higher concentrations of elements such as sodium, aluminum and potassium, and lower concentrations of magnesium, iron and nickel, than other igneous rocks studied on Mars.

While previously unknown on Mars, this type of chemical composition is seen in a rare but well-studied class of rocks on Earth. On Earth, such specimens are found on oceanic islands such as Hawaii and in other places. They are thought to form when interior rocks melt to form magma, which then rises toward the surface. As it rises, it cools, and parts of the material crystalize, preferentially selecting some elements while leaving a remainder of liquid magma that is enriched with the left-behind chemicals.

However, the researchers said it's too soon to know whether the Jake rock formed this same way.

"This is based on one rock and one has to be careful not to extrapolate," said Edward Stolper, provost of Caltech and co-investigator on Curiosity's science team. "You have to wait and see if we find others and if relationships among them give us clues into the processes."

Ultimately, this rock is deepening scientists' understanding of the types of geology present on Mars, and could reveal new formation processes for known types of rocks.

"There is a richness in the igneous story that's not surprising," Stolper told Space.com. "The more you look, the more you find different things happened."

Mysterious shiny object
Curiosity is about 65 days into its mission, and still testing out all of its equipment.

The rover used its scoop tool to dig up Martian dirt for the first time earlier this week, and scientists saw a strange shiny object in photos of the scooped material. The find put a temporary halt on scooping activities while mission managers investigated the object.

Scientists have since concluded that it is most likely a bit of plastic from the rover itself or its descent stage that came loose and eventually fell onto the ground.

"The main thing here is, we scoured the rover and it's completely inconsequential to the rover's function," said Chris Roumeliotis, lead turret rover planner for Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., where Curiosity's mission control is based. "It's likely from EDL [entry, descent and landing], and there is absolutely no issue."

Mission team members will continue investigating the debris, but they think it might be a piece of resistive heating material from the rover's exterior that was attached with adhesive, which might have come unstuck.

Caring for Curiosity

NASA's Curiosity rover is as big as a compact car and weighs a ton ... and it's on Mars. Here's where the journey began. A white-room team works on the six-wheeled spacecraft on Aug. 13, 2011, at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
(NASA via Getty Images)
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Curious about Curiosity

Jasper Goldberg and Andreas Bastian, both 22, watch live NASA coverage of Curiosity's descent to Mars on the giant video screen in New York's Times Square.
(Andrew Burton / Reuters)
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Watching and waiting

Steve Collins waits for word at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's mission control room during the "seven minutes of terror" as Curiosity approaches the surface of Mars on Aug. 5. Collins was working at JPL in 1993 when NASA's Mars Observer probe was lost just before its scheduled arrival at the Red Planet.
(Fred Prouser / Reuters)
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Touchdown!

The Mars Science Laboratory team in the Mission Support Area at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reacts after learning that the Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars. The happy news came at 10:31 p.m. PT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. ET Aug. 6).
(Bill Ingalls / NASA via Reuters)
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From Mars to Times Square

Great catch!

As it flew high above, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this picture of the Curiosity rover and its parachute descending to the Martian surface on Aug. 5. The inset image has been processed to bring out additional detail in the view of the rover and the chute.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech via AP)
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Flying saucer

A color image shows the Mars Science Laboratory's heat shield, as seen by a camera on the Curiosity rover during the spacecraft's descent on Aug. 5. The picture was obtained by the Mars Descent Imager instrument, also known as MARDI, and shows the 15-foot (4.5-meter) diameter heat shield when it was flying away 50 feet (16 meters) below the spacecraft. This image shows the inside surface of the heat shield, with its protective multilayered insulation.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)
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The mountain ahead

One of the first views from NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on Aug. 5, shows the rover's shadow in the foreground and a 3-mile-high mountain known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp in the distance. That mountain is the rover's eventual destination. The picture was taken through a "fisheye" wide-angle lens by one of the rover's hazard avoidance cameras.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech via AFP - Getty)
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Miles and miles on Mars

This image, released on Aug. 9, shows part of the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover as seen by one of the rover's navigation cameras. The rover's pointy low-gain antenna and its paddle-shaped high-gain antenna are among the pieces of hardware visible in the foreground. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen at the horizon.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech via AFP - Getty)
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Curiosity's crime scene

The four main pieces of hardware that arrived on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover are pinpointed in this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, taken 24 hours after landing. The heat shield was the first piece to hit the ground, followed by the back shell attached to the parachute. The rover itself was lowered to the ground on cables by its rocket-powered sky crane. The cables were cut, and then the sky crane flew away to its own crash landing.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech via Getty Images)
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What a blast!

This is a portion of the first 360-degree black-and-white panoramic view acquired by the navigation cameras aboard NASA's Curiosity rover. Two disturbed areas are visible in the foreground, where the rocket thrusters on Curiosity's sky crane blasted away the surface gravel to reveal bedrock below. The high country of Gale Crater's rim can be seen in the distance.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech via AFP - Getty)
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First color picture

An image from the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, provides the first color view of the north wall and rim of Gale Crater. The picture was taken by the MAHLI camera at the end of Curiosity's stowed robotic arm. The view appears fuzzy because of the dust that has settled on the camera's removable cover.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS via AP)
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Mars in living color

A color image from NASA's Curiosity Rover shows the pebble-covered surface of Mars. This is a portion of the first color 360-degree panorama from NASA's Curiosity rover, made up of thumbnails, which are small copies of higher-resolution images. The mission's destination, a mountain at the center of Gale Crater called Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, can be seen in the distance rising up toward the left. Blast marks from the rover's descent stage are in the foreground.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Getty Images)
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Pew-pew

This composite image, with magnified insets, shows the results of the first laser test by the ChemCam instrument aboard NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. The composite incorporates a Navcam image taken prior to the test, with insets taken by the camera in ChemCam. The circular insert highlights the rock before the laser test. The square inset is further magnified and processed to show the effect of the laser blasts on Aug. 19.
(LANL / MSSS / JPL-Caltech / NASA via Reuters)
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Future mapped out

NASA's Curiosity rover landed inside Gale Crater at the green dot, within the Yellowknife quadrangle, on Aug. 5. The team has decided to send it first to the region marked by a blue dot, that is nicknamed Glenelg. That area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain. Then the rover will aim for the blue spot marked "Base of Mt. Sharp," where a natural break in Martian sand dunes will provide an opening for Curiosity to begin scaling the lower reaches of Mount Sharp.
(Univ. of Ariz. / JPL-Caltech / NASA via Reuters)
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First steps

Curiosity's navigation camera system looks back at the wheel tracks from the rover's first test drive on Aug. 22. The $2.5 billion rover made its first moves a little more than two weeks after its arrival on Mars.
(JPL-Caltech / NASA via AFP - Getty Images)
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Mount Sharp

Mount Sharp is seen in the distance in an image taken Aug. 23 by the 34-millimeter Mast Camera on Curiosity. The gravelly area around Curiosity's landing site is visible in the foreground. Farther away, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image, the terrain falls off into a depression (a swale). Beyond the swale, in the middle of the image, is the boulder-strewn, red-brown rim of a moderately-sized impact crater. Father off in the distance, there are dark dunes and then the layered rock at the base of Mount Sharp. Some haze obscures the view, but the top ridge, depicted in this image, is 10 miles (16.2 kilometers) away. Scientists enhanced the color to show the Martian scene under the lighting conditions we have on Earth.
(NASA via AFP - Getty Images)
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Hip-hop on Mars

Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas sings at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Aug. 28. Will.i.am's "Reach for the Stars" officially became the first song broadcast from Mars, thanks to a signal beamed from Curiosity.
(Nick Ut / AP)
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Mmm, Marsberries!

Small spherical objects fill the field in this Martian mosaic combining four images from the Microscopic Imager on NASA's Opportunity rover. The Sept. 6 view covers an area about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) across, at an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater. Shortly after its landing in 2004, Opportunity spotted similar spherules that were nicknamed "blueberries," but these berries are not as rich in iron, posing a scientific puzzle.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ USGS/Modesto Junior College via EPA)
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'Do I look fat?' Curiosity checks its belly

A mosaic of photos taken on Sept. 9 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the underside of the rover and its six wheels, with Martian terrain stretching back to the horizon. The four circular features on the front edge of the rover are the lenses for the left and right sets of Curiosity's hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams. Because of the different perspectives used for different images, some of the borders of the photos don't line up precisely.
(NASA via AFP - Getty Images)
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A Martian rock called Jake

NASA's Curiosity rover stopped about 8 feet (2.5 meters) in front of this Red Planet rock on Sept. 19, the mission's 43rd Martian day, or sol. The pyramid-shaped chunk was the first rock that the Curiosity rover touched for science's sake. It was named "Jake Matijevic" in honor of a top engineer who worked on every one of NASA's rover missions — but passed away just days after Curiosity's landing. Jake the rock, which measures about 10 inches (25 centimeters) tall, provided a good reference point for the rover's sophisticated instruments.
(NASA via Getty Images)
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Rover's footprint

NASA's Curiosity rover cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site on Mars to give researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple. The rover's right navigation camera took this image of the scuff mark on the mission's 57th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 3), the same sol that a wheel created the mark. For scale, the width of the wheel track is about 16 inches (40 centimeters).
(Handout / Reuters)
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Rover's self-portrait

The Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture the set of thumbnail images stitched together to create this full-color self-portrait in this Oct. 31, 2012 image from NASA.
(NASA via Reuters)
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Life on Mars?

The first sample of powdered rock extracted by the drill of Curiosity is seen on Feb. 20, 2013. Powder drilled out of a rock on Mars contains the best evidence yet that the Red Planet could have supported living microbes billions of years ago, the team behind NASA's Curiosity rover said March 12, 2013.

The big picture

This picture isn't from the Curiosity rover - it's a 2003 image from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing the full disk of Mars. The big picture hints at how much we'll be learning about the Red Planet during Curiosity's two-year, $2.5 billion mission. And that's just the beginning: Scientists hope the nuclear-powered rover will last years or even decades longer.
(NASA via AP)
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Editor's note:
This image contains graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing.